Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday March 24, 2013 @11:25AM
from the onward-and-upward dept.

First time accepted submitter Gerardo Zamudio writes with the news that Ur-distribution Slackware is replacing MySQL with MariaDB. From an update posted to the Slackware news feed yesterday: "This shouldn't really be a surprise on any level. The poll on LQ showed a large majority of our users were in favor of the change. It's my belief that the MariaDB Foundation will do a better job with the code, be more responsive to security concerns, and be more willing to work with the open source community. And while I don't think there is currently any issue with MySQL's licensing of the community edition for commercial uses, several threads on LQ showed that there is confusion about this, whereas with MariaDB the freedom to use the software is quite clear." (Here's a link to the mentioned poll.)

InnoDB is great with MySQL if you require a "proper" ACID compliant transactional RDBMS. MyISAM is great if you need rapid data logging. The various other database engines that MySQL wraps are also great for their designed purpose. Saying MySQL was rubbish until InnoDB came along demonstrates an embarrassingly superficial understanding of what MySQL, InnoDB, MyISAM et al are for.

No. It just betrays a certain bias that is common among the sorts of people that employ relational databases. It comes with the whole "SQL" thing. These people are very demanding and don't suffer fools or excuses lightly.

MySQL was only usable due to InnoDB (also owned by Oracle), a third party MySQL database storage engine that reimplemented everything since MySQL did it wrong.

InnoDB is crap! - Major headache to maintain compared to MyISAM tables which clearly separates each table into separate files. Much easier to shrink (optimize) tables as well as it doesn't require all data of all other tables to be reprocessed as well.

Of course this does not fix the ibdata01 file growth issue in heavy transactional systems. Putting all that meta crap in a a file that does not shrink ever is the stupidest design decision in innodb. We have have had to rebuild several times because the ibdata file has grown to fill the disk despite not having any table data. Something to do with flush logs and transactions or something.

Saw something in labs build that may mitigate the need to rebuild completely from scratch when t

Back in the early 90s I was working on a project that had a really large database (about 10,000 rows.) My coworkers were doing the user interface, and I was doing backend data interfaces. I spent a day learning enough SQL and Informix to do what we needed, but management didn't want to spring for $5K for an Informix software license, so I built the pieces I needed out of the standard Unix sort and join. It worked well enough, though it took an extra week or two because there are lots of slightly differen

Not really. But Slackware is probably the only distro I'd consider running. Most other distros have so much bloat and dependency on scripts that modifying anything breaks stuff. I really dislike how far things have changed from the 2.0 kernel days.

The problem is when your distro overwrites your config file every boot, just to make sure everything is fresh. To modify it, you really need to modify the underlying m4 file, which needs a script run before the system takes effect!

I used Arch for over a year and really liked it. One day I decided to try Slackware. Biggest improvement was not having to constantly update. Arch is great but it turns out I didn't really need rolling release. Additionally less (admittedly) minor issues with Slackware. Arch is a great distro but Slackware is better (for me).

to be stable doesn't mean that system is old or outdated, means that it works always. slackware software versions are as updated as other distros, but they will only update the software is its known that will not bring problems! nobody wants a Xorg server that is full of bugs or that cant be used with nvidia or ati/amd drivers. In slackware, after one upgrade, the system will continue to work... not all distros can say the same.

In slackware, after one upgrade, the system will continue to work... not all distros can say the same.

That seems like the understatement of the year after seeing the back and forth over with the most recent Slackware 14.0 and the delays to ensure that everything actually works. As far as the initial configuration after install that has gotten better, I really don't miss trying to get X working like in the old days, and will ovten work out of the box. The other think I like is that stuff appears in the correct spot with the correct name so if you need to build something from source you don't have to try and

Yes. It distinguishes between "Nobody should give a damn what this distro chooses to do" and "The is a rather significant choice, considering the distro's notability" and does so using less words and more proof.

> Let's say I'm making a program that is for idiots....that is supposed to just work,

That's your responsibilty like it's always has been. It doesn't matter if it's your own code or depedencies. The fact that things like package managers and Installshield scripts exist doesn't alter the fact that you still have to roll up your sleeves and do the relevant work.

The GPL doesn't alter this. Even the requirement to distribute source code of derivative works doesn't impact this. It's an entirely separate problem.

It's a total red herring.

Although supporting a relational database server is not for dummies regardless of what Balmer or Ellison will try to tell you. It doesn't matter "how well supported" it is.

SQLite just called and wants you to take back your stale information back!

We sell a product using SQLite and have literally tens of thousands of installs with an error level low enough that our half dozen or so support staff keep up nicely. True, we use Post GRES on our central servers, but even there the admin requirements are quite reasonable...

If your program is for idiots, use SQLite or another embedded database. They are a lot better suited for the job.You don't need a pick-up truck for grocery shopping, you don't need a full-blown database for most applications.

Well independent of what the main website is devoted to doing, the forum there is the "Official" web form for Slackware. If you want to post something the developers; mainly Patrick, will read LQ is the place to do it. So for anyone running Slackware and having strong feelings about anything in particular, your opinion matters Pat cares, and you should pay attention to what goes on at LQ; because chances are good you will be affected by it.

Just in case you dont know, LQ is the oficial slackware forum. Many important slackware users and admins are there.there is also a internal mailling list and the freenode IRC channel. All serve as a feedback for decision making.

An important change in the distro affecting hundreds of users is based on a poll from only 59 people?

A sample size of 59 is more than sufficient. A more important concern is whether the sample is representative, and whether the question is biased in some way.

People often greatly overestimate the importance of sample size [wikipedia.org] in polling, but increasing the sample size usually makes little difference. For instance, if you are conducting a political poll by phone, you need to consider that Democrats are more likely to be home, more likely to answer the phone (rather than let to go to an answering machine), and more willing to talk to pollsters. You also need to consider that Republicans are more likely to have multiple phone numbers, and are more likely to actually vote. Properly accounting for these factors will improve your results far more than increasing your sample size.

I could not figure out who they were polling. Romney sucked so bad a lot of Republicans actually preffered four more years of Obama. At least let him get the blame for all the negative shit that has to eventually hit the fan. I figured I would rather have a real socialist in the Whitehouse than a socialist who pretends he's a conservative. I remember when all those candidates for the Republican nomination were debating I told my wife that they'd pick Romney and she asked why and I told her, because he's

So, why do we bother with the expense of elections? Serious question. If polling 1000 people can tell you what it is we want, then why bother asking everyone? Because of some fiction regarding waiting outside a polling place for 4 hours? Wouldn't it be better if we just let the smart people in our society take all the positions of power instead of dumbfuck politicians?

The problem is that it's not at all clear that MariaDB is a viable alternative either, IMHO.

They have rewritten a lot of the internals, but are still committed to complete compatibility with MySQL. That is going to take a lot of developer resources. Do they have the backing they need to continue long term development?

Their main claim to legitimacy seem to be that MySQL founder Monty is now leading development of MariaDB... But MySQL was always terrible. If you asked whether people wanted to return to the "g

It's a perfectly viable alternative to MySQL. The emphasis is on MySQL. Nobody's saying that you should replace a real DB server with it, but if you want to get away from Oracle, you can, and there's a strong possibility that it will actually be better.

It would be more accurate to say that VM support for Slackware is not nearly as good as other mainstream Linux distros. VMWare and VirtualPC for example don't have packages for slackware guests as they do for Redhat and Windows which can introduce performance issues. A quick Googling shows the reverse to be true, that getting VM programs to run with Slackware as the host is not as well supported either and requires more hands on effort to get them running.

Here in the real world Slackware blows as a VM and is irrelevant to the future of cloud computing.

Right. This is why I have Slackware VMs all over the place, with uptimes in the hundreds of days.

Oh, and "cloud" computing can be based on any distribution - not just Ubuntu or Fedora. Slackware is ideal for this, since it is (IMHO) much easier to personalize, manage and configure on a daily basis.

Ironically, I just ordered my first Slackware DVD today. I have been running Red Hat and Debian variants for years. At work, our enterprise has had a strictly Windows only policy for years. Now, our management is fully committed to an enterprise-wide migration of Windows to Linux for our Oracle database servers (over 500 of them), and I am in charge of it.

The reason I ordered slackware is because it requires in-depth knowledge of Linux, something the other distros don't require as much. I figure this wi

when Amazon offers MariaDB, I will know its time to embrace it. For now, I will stick with Mysql. I think MariaDB is "my" future, but not this year. Why won't it just get bought up by Larry Ellison or worse?

"As a first distro, where you want everything to just work first time, I can readily recommend Linux Mint." - Are you kidding me? I DL'd the latest Linux Mint (XFCE) version and installed it on my Father-in-law's computer.Grief right from the beginning with it partitioning, then not wanting to install to the partition then more headaches from there.

I jumped the mint ship really quick, every version I have tried just had a pile of nitpicky bullshit headaches added on to its half thought out, partially broken tacked on enhancements... I dont see why people would recommend it, its just ubuntu with more junk to break. If I just want to drop a disk in and install its typically xubuntu these days